I am working on some old reel tapes and one problem I am getting is tape dropouts where the oxide has come off, worn off or some other reason for the signal to momentarily drop.

The symptoms are a dip in volume for anything between 100ms and 1500ms (depending on cause and tape speed). What is needed is a temporary volume boost with a steep (but preferably adjustable) slope at the start and end.

I know WC is not the right tool for this. I have Audacity and the "Envelope Editing" tool seems to be the right sort of tool but that only allows boosting to 150% which is often not enough. Can anyone suggest any other method to try to correct the problem

Hi Glenn, I don't think it is a filter in the sense that WC uses the term. It is more of a curve that is actually applied at playback time. I suppose the only thing that I could do would be to save the file and go in and do it again.

Sorry, this is what I meant. For short drop-outs the cut and splice option in WC would be much easier . This works fairly well for music without a strong rhythm. I use it for removing tape drop-outs and surface dimples on older classical music records. The short splice length works best for these.